Apropos Byron’s succeeding post: also very interesting. The government is virtually always very happy to go with 11 jurors rather than 12. Eleven are easier to convince; plus, anything new you add to the deliberation mix is destabilizing, and the government generally wants stability and good order, not chaos.

Thus, the fact that Pat Fitzgerald would rather add a juror than go with 11 is puzzling. Either there must be something about the first alternate that the government thinks would be unusually good for the prosecution, or there is some strange jury dynamic afoot — which would be impossible to assess without being in the courtroom and getting a look at what’s going on in there.